


it's just medicine

by crowkag



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Happy Hogan is a Good Bro, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Insomnia, James "Rhodey" Rhodes is a Good Bro, Medical Inaccuracies, POV Pepper Potts, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Post-Break Up, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Iron Man 1, Protective James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Time Skips, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, in that this is like...in the canon timeline but also Not, probably. Definitely., u feel me, unspecified AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27811492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowkag/pseuds/crowkag
Summary: Everybody has their bad days. Unfortunately for Tony, this also includes genius billionaire playboy philanthropists.(or: an exploration of mental health, through the eyes of Tony Stark and the people who love him most.)
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 18
Kudos: 46





	1. rhodey

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for alcohol, discussions of alcohol abuse, hospital imagery, vomiting, and language
> 
> stay safe and enjoy <3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the last thing Rhodey had expected in that moment was coherent words, but then Tony blinked and opened his mouth.
> 
> “He told me I was alright,” he rumbled, voice scratchy and half-choked. “He said he liked me and invited me to hang out with his friends.” When he swallowed it sent his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I blacked out on his couch and woke up in the emergency room.”
> 
> Rhodey searched Tony's face, watching for the subtle, steely narrowing of his eyes. For that silent determination. When their gazes met—finally, _finally_ —it was like permission. He turned, threw, witnessed the glass exploding, just the same in terms of spectacle but ten times as satisfying.

With JARVIS’s assistance, Rhodey found Tony pacing a hole into his garage.

He looked… not great. Half-mad, actually, with deep bags under his eyes and nervous, twitchy fingers running loops through disheveled hair. Rhodey took four careful steps inside before Tony noticed his presence— _just_ noticed, nothing more than that. No characteristic quip or grin was given in greeting, no spreading of arms for a firm hug. Instead, red-rimmed eyes locked onto Rhodey’s across the room and widened minutely, a look of alarm that quickly morphed into one of shame. Fists clenching, Tony turned away, his breathing heavy in a way that betrayed how controlled it was.

That was when Rhodey noticed the alcohol.

Against one wall of the garage, atop a scattered grouping of workbenches and stools, sat a sizable forest of bottles. Whiskey and rum, vodka and hard cider. Wines and spirits and beers. Containers of all shapes, sizes, colors—and not one of them was open. No glasses were poured, no stoppers uncorked. They were all piled up, labels twisting in various directions, the fine details screaming that everything had simply been _dumped_ there. But there was a smell to accompany it, a stain past Tony’s shoulder, splattered hard on the wall below a narrow window. Glass formed a glinting spray on the concrete beneath.

Sizing the situation up took no more than a split-second, and it took even shorter for Rhodey to decide he could handle this. Years spent taking care of an alcohol-addled Tony Stark had made him something of an expert on the matter. Whether the drink was metabolizing in the bloodstream or drenching the room, it all amounted to a similar dilemma.

He picked his pathway carefully, coming up to the alcohol first. His hand reached for a spherical bottle of brandy perched precariously on the edge of a stool. Liquid sloshed up the inside of its narrow neck when he picked it up, movements thoughtful and slow.

When he approached Tony, it was along the path of a wide semi-circle, making sure he registered in the other man’s periphery before stepping to his side. Tony had his eyebrows lowered, breaths still puffing out hard. He looked a little shell-shocked, a little out of it, his shoulders bunching up, though Rhodey knew the visual meant nothing. He knew that Tony was on high alert.

Staring at his best friend’s profile, he spoke calm and even. Purposeful, steady, soothing. The brandy was a weight in his palms.

“Freshman year, fall semester. Some assholes getting wasted by the back exit of MacGregor's.”

He stepped back, wound his arm around, and chucked. The bottle flung out from his fingers, shot off into an airborne cartwheel and exploded on the wall, a solid bull’s-eye over that first stain, that initial step.

Glass sprayed, liquor splashed, and Tony didn’t blink. Didn’t move, outside a small flinch and tightening to his jaw.

Rhodey made his way back to the tables, wrapped a hand around a dusty vintage of who the hell knew what. When he returned to Tony’s side, he noticed the heavy breathing had abated somewhat.

“In that empty parking lot behind the laundromat,” he said. “The guys living above us offered you a drink when you paid for their wash cycles.”

A beat, a wind back, a chuck, a shatter. The second flinch came less pronounced that time. It was progress being made.

Another bottle was grabbed, tinted green and shaped like a teardrop, with a flattened bottom and tapering top. Rhodey came to stand in front of Tony that time, trying and failing at catching his eyes.

“Winter break. Ian what’s-his-face. Mediocre football player who thought he ruled the world.”

And the last thing Rhodey had expected in that moment was coherent words, but then Tony blinked and opened his mouth.

“He told me I was alright,” he rumbled, voice scratchy and half-choked. “He said he liked me and invited me to hang out with his friends.” When he swallowed it sent his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I blacked out on his couch and woke up in the emergency room.”

Rhodey searched Tony's face, watching for the subtle, steely narrowing of his eyes. For that silent determination. When their gazes met—finally, _finally_ —it was like permission. He turned, threw, witnessed the glass exploding, just the same in terms of spectacle but ten times as satisfying.

A fourth bottle then, of ruby red wine. Unopened, forgotten, shoved to the distant corner of some shelf, but the possibilities in its existence—the threats it presented—proved noteworthy. Rhodey balanced it out on his palms like a waiter in a restaurant, an offer for judgement and then a sentencing to the chopping block. Tony let out a hard breath, staring with pinched brows and a mouth still working to shake off vestiges of numbness.

“This is… spring break,” he said eventually, facial features twisted, eyes flashing with memory. “Our sophomore year, at some girl’s apartment. I think her name was… actually, I don’t remember. But she was in a chemistry class with me and I thought she was gorgeous.”

A spot of flesh to his cheek dented inward, teeth biting the inside of his mouth. He rubbed the tip of his nose, sniffed, then straightened himself up. Rhodey felt pride blooming in his chest.

“I did a keg stand. Got, uh—got thirteen gulps in before I choked. Threw up on the bathroom floor, and… I called you, somehow. And you drove me home.”

Rhodey set his face and nodded in encouragement. Tony’s lips twisted to the side, one final beat of ponderance, and then he gripped the bottle by the neck. It went back in a clean arc over his head, a perfect swing in how it disappeared behind his shoulder before being whipped forward and away.

When the bottle shattered, Tony's face moved in subtle shifts and phases, like it didn’t quite know how to react. Muscles pulled into a tiny smile, bunched downwards in a frown. Something pained, then something empty, then something _furious_ , then something free. He took a step forward, stumbled a couple paces back, twisted around on his heel with hands tugging at his shirt collar and sliding through his sweat-drenched hair.

He turned back to look at Rhodey, heaved an exhale that sputtered into a wild laugh on the fringe space. Hysterical, splintered, patchwork, calmed and calming, gold being dripped into the cracks of shattered pottery. The end of one dark, horrible phase rotating into a beginning as uncertain as it was hopeful, as terrifying as it was liberating.

Tony laughed again, louder and clearer, and went to grab another bottle. Genuine Irish rum, early twentieth century, half empty with a loosened cork. Not that the labels mattered.

“Some gala Howard took me to when I was seventeen.”

 _That_ mattered.

Wind up, chuck, shatter.

Rhodey picked an identical bottle, drained down to a thin sheet of liquid. Tony squinted thoughtfully and said, “Finals week, during my last semester. Cheap beer in the dorm stairwell because I couldn’t sleep.”

They both watched the resulting fireworks of glass shards, again and again.

“That shitty home-brewed beer I was getting wasted on the night mom died.”

Again—

“An important conference in Tokyo. Pepper was pissed off for weeks.”

And again—

“For all the nights I can’t remember.”

Again again again again.

More memories, more wind-ups, more arches, more physics at work. Shatter, crack, burst, splash, glass clinking to the concrete, liquor drenching the hoods of expensive sports cars. A bleeding outwards, into Tony’s adult life, spreading into PR scandals, or all those restless nights after Maria’s funeral. Boring parties, lively parties, ritzy parties, no parties. Over and over.

Eventually, the stories stopped. Eventually, it was simply the sound. It was the pent-up pain. The burning. The _satisfaction_.

Decades of mess, regret, mistake, accident, grief, anger. All starting in a desperate lob through the air, and ending in jumbled formations of shards.

****

They’d opened the windows and set the fans on high to vent the fumes out. Outside the garage doors, settled against the stairs with their legs stretched out before them, they stared at their mess, and Rhodey could tell when it hit Tony. When he realized what it meant. What he’d done, what path he’d just chosen to crawl down. The man curled up, knees pressed to his chest and head dropping down, knuckles blanching where he gripped his hair.

He shook, shoulder blades vibrating into the firm palm Rhodey placed on his back. It could be felt, his laughter. A desperate sort of motion that started silently, came out wheezing, then choked into something else.

A sob.

“I’m a fucking idiot,” Tony croaked. “A fucking moron. _God_.”

Rhodey saw through the garage’s glass windows. He saw his best friend beside him, shuddering and shrinking and failing horribly at concealing how hard he was crying. He saw the white tiling under their feet, the bare traces of sun filtering down from the living space above. But before all of that sat something else, playing out in his mind’s eye with a flicker. Buried memories, painful and sensory.

There was the image of Tony passed out in a stranger’s bathroom.

The smell of treasured hoodies shoved into trash bags, marred with stains so deep and numerous that no hope existed of washing them out.

Sounds of retching, the feeling of vomit coating his shoes. A sputtering Tony, saliva and sick dripping from his lips, tangled up in an endless stream of “shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

It was Tony hooked up to an IV drip, vision coming back spotty in the center and blurred on the edges because not five hours earlier, he’d been having a seizure on the ratty carpet of a fraternity house.

It was Howard barging into the hospital room, ignoring the indignant shouts of medical staff so he could grab his son by the white-and-blue fabric of his gown, bunching the material and yanking him so close that his spit spattered Tony's nose.

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you? Huh? Just _what_ is your _fucking_ problem, Anthony?”

It was the hands of doctors and nurses tearing the man away, forcing him back from where Tony shrank into himself and started shaking. It was Rhodey’s grip in there too, harsh enough around the collar of Howard's shirt that the clothing ripped.

It was Tony trembling. It was the jerking, the puking, the hurting. The hangovers, the crying, the desperate and often failed attempts at leaving bed in time for class.

All of it—every last bit of it—was _Tony_ , fourteen into fifteen into sixteen, and then into thirty-two. Tony, lost in swathes of swaying hips and tight dresses, maybe laughing, maybe smiling, with a glass in his hand. Always always _always_ with a glass in his hand.

There was glass here too, but not _a_ glass. It was littered atop the seats of fancy vehicles, sparkling along the floor, probably embedded in the garage walls by this point, and it was just _glass_. Nothing more than shatters, now.

Rhodey moved his hand from Tony’s back to wrap around his best friend’s side, gently pulling him against his shoulder. The thready _“I’m a fucking idiot”_ bounced around inside his skull, a lingering echo, and _this is the smartest thing you’ve ever done_ was what Rhodey thought to say first.

“I’ve got you,” was what he decided on instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> school is kicking my ass. pray for me :')
> 
> this was supposed to be the start to a multichapter thing about tony, his mental health, and all the people who help him along the way. because lord, i project a lot onto peter but i feel more connected to tony in lots of ways. i've already got something finished for happy that's pretty much directly related to this piece, and then every other chapter would be loosely related. i'm editing pepper's section and am trying to work on stuff for peter and may, too :) except NOW i'm not sure if i want to go the multichapter route or make a series out of it instead. we will see!! 
> 
> anyWAYS, thank you for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos <333 to anybody else struggling w the end of the semester, i believe in u !!


	2. happy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I didn’t say I wanted coffee," he groused, looking up.
> 
> “It’s seven AM on a Monday, boss. Everybody wants coffee at seven AM on a Monday.”
> 
> “Not me. I don’t even drink coffee.”
> 
> Happy didn’t say anything to that, grabbing a pair of shades from an overhead compartment and pushing them onto his nose. When they stopped at a red light down the road, Tony took a tentative sip and made a face. It tasted as awful as it smelled, just as he’d figured it would.
> 
> By the time they reached the rehab center, he’d downed the entire thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> decided to make this multichap after all, since that's what i intended originally :) this chapter is more directly linked to the first one, and anything afterwards will be loosely related at most.
> 
> chapter warnings for: language, mentions of alcohol abuse, and discussions of an implied suicide that happened in the past. tags will be updated accordingly, stay safe <3

His hands started shaking too much to drive a car, so Happy took the liberty of assigning himself chauffeur duty. Tony hated it.

It wasn’t an issue of trust. He didn’t watch his bodyguard get behind the wheel and feel an uncomfortable plummet in his stomach. He didn’t worry about finding himself bruised and battered on the wrong angle of a turnpike.

No, it was about control. About image. How embarrassed he felt, how frustrating it was to need this kind of assistance. It made him regret that day with Rhodey more than any other consequence of his decision. More than the tremors, the nausea, the cold sweats at two in the morning. If he couldn’t even… if he couldn’t fucking _drive himself_ to his own goddamn rehabilitation sessions, if he needed to be carted around like a kindergartener strapped into a booster seat, then why go anywhere at all?

Happy noticed his more obvious spirals, because of course he did. Nobody who spent four years stationed at their boss’s ass, chasing paparazzi away from locked bedroom doors or knocking suspicious champagne flukes from shady hands, walked away knowing absolutely nothing about said boss’s emotional tells. Only, Happy didn’t typically acknowledge those things. He never asked, never pried, just did what he was paid for and did it well, and that was why Tony kept him on.

So he was more than a little surprised when a warm, paper cup of coffee was pressed into his palm. They’d pulled up outside a café five minutes ago, Happy saying he liked a large sweet tea to wake him up in the mornings. He’d left Tony sitting in the backseat, fingers drumming along the door handle and windows tinted as dark as they’d go, even with the sunglasses he wore.

Now he stared down at an unexpected beverage, nose wrinkling. The smell leaking from under the lid was strong and bitter.

“I didn’t say I wanted coffee,” he groused, looking up. Happy was already putting the car into drive and rolling them out onto the street, shooting an unreadable expression at him through the rear view mirror.

“It’s seven AM on a Monday, boss. Everybody wants coffee at seven AM on a Monday.”

“Not me. I don’t even drink coffee.”

Happy didn’t say anything to that, grabbing a pair of shades from an overhead compartment and pushing them onto his nose. When they stopped at a red light down the road, Tony took a tentative sip and made a face. It tasted as awful as it smelled, just as he’d figured it would.

By the time they reached the rehab center, he’d downed the entire thing.

****

It became routine. The slide into the backseat, a flip of a turn signal as they pulled into that same café, a steaming cup of espresso handed to him over the front console. The taste never got better, but neither did it worsen. It burned the same bit of ridged skin behind his front teeth each morning without fail, and he liked to run his tongue over the wound in a mindless pattern while his therapist asked about symptoms and progress and nerve endings, about pasts and presents and futures.

Happy had found something that stuck. Something that helped, however minutely. And Tony wasn’t as shocked by that as he thought he’d be. It was comforting, actually, to know his bodyguard was good for more than muscle.

Maybe that was why Tony didn’t question it when, on a morning where he had to tour a newly built SI facility in the heart of Los Angeles County, Happy passed by the correct interchange and twisted them down a one-way side street instead. He figured the correct thing would be to protest at least a little bit, for the sake of whatever lab personnel would be obsessively counting the minutes on their watches until his scheduled arrival, but he just settled back. Outside the window, buildings of glass panels and white stucco baking in the heat gave way to mom-and-pop pizza joints, local thrift stores, laundromats with faded paint jobs, all their hanging neon signs flicked off under the midday sun.

“What’re you thinking here, Hap?” Tony asked when they circled into a rear parking spot behind a strip of family businesses. A large metal door sat before the car, with a sign tacked above that read SALLY’S GYM. BACK ENTRANCE FOR REGULARS ONLY.

Happy stepped out onto the concrete and replied, “I’m thinking you need a break.” When he pulled a rusty key from his inside coat pocket and entered the gym with a creaking groan of hinges, Tony followed.

****

The Sally of Sally’s Gym was actually named Tiana, and she’d said with a quiet smile that Harold had introduced her to her wife, so he had free reign of her business on every day of the week except Wednesdays. Tony would have inquired as to what happened on Wednesdays if it weren’t for Happy shooting him a not-so-subtle look, mouthing a quick “don’t ask.”

While being led from Tiana’s back office and down a hallway with dark green walls and LED lights humming across the ceiling, Tony thought about the strangeness of witnessing people’s lives rotate onwards outside his presence. It felt like a subtle, self-imposed poke at his ego, yet also like acceptance. He was now privy to this single, tiny cog spinning around in the machine of Happy Hogan’s personal reality, and Tony was excellent enough at reading people to know that his bodyguard wasn't one to let just _anybody_ in that close.

Happy opened a door onto a spacious room that left Tony raising a brow as he was ushered further inside. The walls were covered with low rows of wooden cubbies and higher lines of metal lockers, posters and pamphlets and black-and-white photographs decorating whatever inches of empty paint had been left behind, though they were mere accent pieces to the center of it all: an ancient-looking boxing ring roped by cords of orange. Tony let himself be directed around its corners, through pockets of dusty, golden sunlight shooting inside from narrow windows.

They stopped at a bench sitting close to the room’s back wall, second from the left of a cracked, red punching bag with faded leather. Happy’s movements were instinctual and routine, like clockwork, and Tony’s eyes narrowed as his bodyguard pulled a pair of white sneakers from a cubby. He shot a curious glance at the ring, then at a lengthy rack of boxing gloves dangling by knotted strings, then back at Happy, who was loosening the tie from around his neck.

“So, let me get this straight. Your idea of a break is punching my lights out? I pay you to do that to everybody _except_ me, Hap.”

Happy smirked, folding down his suit jacket and button-down in a neat pile atop the bench. He now stood in his dress pants and a plain T-shirt.

“No lights will be punched out, boss. I just figured you could do with letting off a little steam.”

Tony blinked, feeling as if he should be flattered. He _was_ flattered, actually, by what Happy’s tone implied. That he’d noticed how today was a twitchier day than usual. A day that felt more like it would run for twenty-five hours instead of the regularly scheduled twenty-four. The slightest lean into fatigue, _why even bother?_ playing on mute in the back of Tony’s brain, but he knew it would take the barest nudge to flip the volume back on. Not a _bad day_ , per se, but an _it’s getting there_ one.

He thought he was pretty damn skilled at tucking himself up when he felt like this, so it was… nice, he supposed, to know he wasn’t as foolproof at it as he thought.

So, yes. He was flattered.

Even when Happy knocked him on his ass not thirty seconds after entering the ring.

****

“I wish I could have a drink,” Tony said from where he lay, a mess of limbs staring up at the wide, circular hanging lamps stretching from the gym’s ceiling. They’d been here… he didn’t know how long. Enough to see that the sun was setting, and Tony probably had more than a few calls lined up from Obadiah, loud demands to know why project leads at that fancy, sparkling new SI facility were reporting that they’d been stood up. He was a sweaty mess, hair sticking to his forehead, shoes and tie and jacket ditched. The top three buttons of his shirt were undone and the expensive fabric bunched up in drenched folds beneath his armpits.

He couldn’t remember ever feeling like this before, exhausted in the physicality but wide awake in any other sense. Heart pounding, muscles like mush, eyelids slipping to half-mast, he sighed.

“I wish I could have a drink,” he said again, softer, wistful, resigned.

Above him, leaning into the ropes with an unreadable expression, Happy cast a glance down, then back up. Down, up, around. A hand imprinted with the memory of wraps raised up to push curling hair back from his forehead. He breathed too, drawn out, slow, out the nose.

The words “Just say whatever it is you need to say, Hogan, Christ,” neared the tip of Tony’s tongue, stopping dead when Happy began talking.

“Ya know, I used to come around here with a buddy of mine. John. He and I would make quick bucks hauling gym equipment around, back when this place was manned by Tiana’s grandmother, and we'd spar after closing hours until we got sent home.”

Happy stared out at some distant point Tony couldn’t see, while Tony kept his own eyes locked on the ceiling.

“John was a real nice guy, and… sometimes it got him into trouble. He got served too many raw deals, had some awful family problems piling up, and his genius solution was bar hopping.” He paused, rotated a wrist joint, continued on with a slightly louder pitch to his voice. “Eventually, he hit an easier patch, and decided that was the sign to start turning things around for himself. He quit the drinking, stopped staying out after midnight so he wouldn’t get tempted. Said he wanted to give up smoking, too.”

Beat by beat, Tony’s heart rate was coming down from its adrenaline high. The lights above his head made weird, spotty haloes, and he blinked at them as he listened.

“Now, a lot of the guys we knew were just… I swear, Tony, they were lost in it. Lost in their drinks, miserable and dependent as all hell. Their eyes always looked like they'd seen a ghost or something, and when John actually made real progress, they had no idea what to make of him. I sometimes couldn’t tell if they found him infuriating or inspiring, but they would ask him how he’d done it—ya know, what his secret was? And he would look them dead in the eye.”

Happy’s gaze lowered while Tony’s shifted higher, meeting in the middle.

“Just like this, he’d stare at them and say—” he brought his voice out deeper, “— _espresso_. As black as it comes, with as much caffeine as the worker can pump you with before their conscience tells them to stop.”

Tony cracked a small grin at the imitation, something Happy returned before sniffing, shrugging, looking away.

“Could be he was bullshitting, at least about the caffeine stuff. I don’t know. I think rehab was hard for him to talk about, but hey. If it works like he said it did, then why the hell not, right?”

He went silent after that, and Tony could feel it. Sudden waves of gratitude for a man he’d never met. Heaving himself into a seating position, he asked, “And what’s John up to nowadays?”

The look Happy got in his eye was like a punch to Tony’s stomach. The man rubbed the back of his neck, face twitching into something momentarily hard, then rolling over into something a little bit lost, a little bit desperate.

“Ah, he uh… He passed away, actually. A couple years before you hired me.”

Tony stared out. Blinked rapidly. Shot a look down at his hands, then puffed out an audible exhale.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Happy sighed, and Tony looked back up.

“Yeah, well… He was doing better for himself, just—he wound up in another shitty spat with his family and it took a toll, I guess. The straw that broke the camel’s back and all that.”

Happy made eye contact with Tony again, tapped his temple with an index finger. “Crazy stuff, this head nonsense, yeah?”

Tony gave a jerky nod and had the distinct sensation that he was being stared at into his core. Like he was being lined up, set as a parallel to another time, another lifestyle.

He could picture those late nights in this ring, laughter and smiles between two friends under glaring lights. Some part of him desperately wanted to prove that he could fit memories in here too, not encroaching on territories of the past but rather adding onto them. Easing the edges of longing and sadness that no doubt permeated the dusty corners of this space, at least in Happy’s eyes.

“Hey, let’s pick up where we left off, huh?” he blurted suddenly, shooting himself to his feet and brushing off his pants. Happy eyed him skeptically.

“You sure about that, boss?”

“No, but let’s pretend that I am and have you show me that twisty move you were doing.”

Happy pushed himself forward with a sigh and a smile, spreading his hands.

“The twisty move. Sure thing.”

Tony grinned across the ring, scooping up the spare set of gloves he’d been tossed earlier. Final strands of California sunset blinked across the lips of windows, and when hanging lights flooded into shaded spaces as the sky got darker, he felt more okay than he had in a long while.


	3. pepper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why can’t you sleep?”
> 
> Tony blinked at that. His gaze shot around, finding the walls and the ceiling, landing anywhere but Pepper’s face. He took his finger out of his mouth, shook his hand out, then shrugged and turned back to his project.
> 
> “Because I have to work.”
> 
> Pepper held in another sigh, folding her hands in front of her. 
> 
> “And… why do you have to work right now?”
> 
> Tony shrugged _again,_ sniffing.
> 
> “Just have to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter takes place in some limbo space after civil war where pepper and tony are still split, but there are enough feelings here that i'll tag as both platonic and romantic :) i'm nervous to post this one, but also pretty proud of it? it's got more going on than tony's mental health, so it was more pieces to balance, i suppose.
> 
> biggest chapter warnings for: language and insomnia. tags will be updated accordingly

“You need to sleep, Tony.”

“I can’t.”

“You _have_ to.”

In the ensuing silence, Pepper reached up to rub a temple, exasperation seeping from every twitch of her fingers.

“It’s been four days,” she continued, voice colored with something dangerously unfriendly. “You’ve been in this lab, eating takeout and working, for four _days_ now, Tony.”

“What can I say?” he shot back, shrugging. “I find I do my best work when I’m delirious and filled with pizza grease.”

“Your best work isn’t _healthy_.”

“Then I’ll order a salad next time I’m hungry, okay?” It would have been a snap if he didn’t sound so exhausted.

Pepper sighed and looked around the expanse of the workshop, which was currently a disastrous wreck rivaling anything she’d seen before. It always tended toward messy, yes, but usually in an organized way. Right now it gave off the impression of carelessness, trash bins overflowing with paper, holographic screens floating around in mindless scrawls of words, and takeout containers towering atop workstations.

Looking back at Tony, the pinch between her eyebrows deepened. She could usually read whatever troubles were carving out space inside his head—pick out the issues and line them up—but tonight was different. Whatever was going on right now, it seemed intent on projecting outwards, showing off its reach through heaps of physical chaos, and Pepper would be lying if she said it didn’t scare her. It flashed her back to consequences of the palladium poisoning, the shattered windows and crashed cars.

“Please go to bed,” she said again, and there was the hint of a desperate plea in there somewhere.

On Tony’s end, his shoulders hiked up and stiffened where they stopped.

“I _can’t_ ,” he responded, something hard caught in the words.

Pepper didn’t know what to do. She hardly ever did anymore, and part of her wanted to just throw up her hands and walk away, because it’d been a long day. Because this wasn’t her job anymore. Because somewhere between Tony’s mouth and her ears, the “I can’t” had twisted itself into a firm “leave me alone.”

The toe of her stiletto shifted an inch. She could do it. Just take off into the night and leave her ex to sort this out on his own, but… a pang of hesitation pricked behind her breastbone, so she cast out another eye. The corners of the workshop stretched far away into shadow, with pockets of scant lighting catching sterile whites, cool blues, and hardened steel. Tony stood in the center of it all, surrounded by a mess so colossal that it held presence, his back turned.

Another thought hit Pepper, then. She’d been down here for a good ten minutes, at least, and Tony hadn’t looked at her once.

Which was… so incredibly unlike him, even with their current relationship status considered. Usually, when they argued, he stared her right in the eye. Defiant, pissed off.

Unafraid.

Pepper pressed her lips together and bit back on a sigh, knowing that she probably wouldn’t be seeing her bed tonight.

“Why?” she asked.

The sound of something snapping reverberated across the room, making Tony yelp and flinch. Then he tensed, glimpsing over his shoulder with an index finger between his lips, eyes narrowed.

“Why what?” he asked around his wounded knuckle.

“Why can’t you sleep?”

Tony blinked at that. His gaze shot around, finding the walls and the ceiling, landing anywhere but Pepper’s face. He took his finger out of his mouth, shook his hand out, then shrugged and turned back to his project.

“Because I have to work.”

Pepper held in another sigh, folding her hands in front of her.

“And… why do you have to work right now?”

Tony shrugged _again_ , sniffing.

“Just have to.”

Pepper took a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut momentarily and thinking back. The only reason she was down here in the first place was because of two annoyed, back-to-back phone calls, both from irritated colleagues complaining about being “stood up” by one irresponsible, genius engineer.

She wouldn’t be down here if not for work.

And she knew—she _knew_ —that this wasn’t her job anymore. She didn’t have to take care of him.

But she also knew that Tony would never ask that of her. He’d never ask it of anybody, which was part of the reason why they’d broken up. She’d assumed—naïvely, maybe, and prematurely—that blowing up all those suits was some display of progress. Except the last couple years had felt like steps in the wrong direction, doors slamming shut, words taken back. It had hurt like hell, the split and the splintering and the walking away.

So now the only purpose she’d have for coming here would be for something professional, and she could leave for the same reason. It would be easy to maintain that distance she didn’t want to bother navigating.

Yet, she was still here. Of course she was. And it probably said a lot of things about her and him and _them_ , but she could work that out later. For now—

Huffing another breath, Pepper reached down to pull off her heels. She perched them delicately atop a clean bit of table behind her before walking to Tony’s side, the soreness in her feet causing her to wince.

Sliding onto an empty stool beside him, she could tell right away that he was forcing himself to keep his gaze focused forward.

“Oh, you’re still here?” he asked with a huff, fiddling with what looked like a small, metal disc. An impressive pile of identical objects sat on the other side of the table, which Pepper leveled with a curious glance before looking straight at Tony. He was visibly exhausted, skin pale and eyes bloodshot at the edges, and would be in desperate need of a shave if allowed a couple more days holed up.

Pepper schooled her concern at his appearance into a look of nonchalance.

“I’m not leaving.”

“Right,” Tony breathed, laughing on the end in a way that bled disbelief.

With a sudden shot of determination, Pepper straightened herself, crossing her arms over her chest and one leg over the other. She angled her head toward the disc in Tony’s hands.

“So, what’s this thing for?”

He didn’t respond, clearly making some valiant effort at remaining silent. Pepper just tilted her chin and cocked a patient eyebrow, knowing the effect her unimpressed expressions had on people, and it only took a couple beats longer than usual before Tony relented, his fingers tapping the table.

“It’s for the kid.”

“Peter?”

“Know of any other kids I hang out with?”

Opting to ignore the edge in his tone, Pepper leaned closer.

“What does it do?”

“Emits a sound wave frequency that explodes the skull of anybody within a twenty mile radius.”

Pepper nodded, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Wow. So I take it Spider-Man changed his no-kill policy?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Tony grumbled, then stuck his thumbnail under the edge of the disc and pushed upwards, popping the thing into two separate pieces. One side flung away over his shoulder to clatter on the floor behind him, though he made no move to retrieve it as he reached for another disc in the pile.

Pepper fell quiet, setting her eyes carefully on Tony’s working hands. She noticed from her periphery the quick glances shot in her direction, blink-and-you’d-miss-it movements that picked up in frequency as the minutes ticked by. It was like she’d be expected to disappear any second now, and Pepper couldn’t tell whether that frustrated or saddened her.

After a few more beats of silence—mostly tense, but sometimes uncertainly easy—it seemed to click in that she actually had no intention of leaving anytime soon. Tony’s posture shifted with the realization, shoulders drooping forward in what appeared as acquiescence.

“He, uh—” The newest disc in his hands popped open and he reached for another, “—talks about issues with his hearing. The kid, I mean. Too much stimulus, makes it hard to focus.”

He itched over the patchy scruff growing higher above his jawline, and Pepper rested her chin in the palm of one hand, a quiet invitation to go on.

“So he designed a little device that should mute stuff out if he needs to, or dull it at the very least. Kind of like an alternate version of Barton’s hearing aids. The device itself is over—” he waved a hand at a cluster of workstations to his right, “—it’s over there, somewhere. Pete did all the wiring himself, and I told him I’d make a casing, something to wind the device inside of so it won’t get damaged. He can weave it into his suit or just press it up to his ears, whatever he fancies.”

He held up the metal disc he was currently working to pry open, observing it under the light, and Pepper caught the way his eyes went all soft for a moment. His voice pitched lower as he continued, like he was suddenly talking only for himself.

“Gotta make cuffs or something to hold the things in place during the school day… match his skin tone so it won’t stand out. Make sure that little Thompson prick has less shit to harp on about.”

Pepper felt a small smile ghost her lips in spite of herself. She’d only met Peter a handful of times, always in brief bursts between meetings and never without Tony standing alongside, but she’d heard enough from James and Happy to know how much the kid brightened things up. Her ex had somehow found himself wrapped tightly around a high schooler’s little finger, and it was… sweet, to see him care this much.

Across from her, Tony’s eyes lowered to meet her gaze halfway. He held the contact for just a split-second, but that must have been too long for him because he quickly cleared his throat and looked down, a furrow appearing between his eyebrows. Pepper decided she should probably spare him from whatever thoughts were no doubt starting to swirl inside his head.

“Now, last I checked—” she began, glancing pointedly at the pile of casings, “—your personal intern only has two ears, so… any particular reason you’ve got about a million of these things?”

Tony shrugged, and Pepper could have sworn she saw the corners of his mouth quirk upwards.

“Well, there is an infinitesimal chance I may have accidentally typed two thousand instead of two when telling Fri how many to make.”

“Mm. And now you absolutely _have_ to take apart every single one?”

She got a raised eyebrow in her direction.

“You’re saying that with a great deal of sarcasm, Miss Potts. No questioning my methods in my workshop.”

Pepper sighed through her nose.

 _Right_.

“Okay, well… Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked. Tony’s face screwed up into a look of incredulity, but it could at least be said that he was looking at her again.

“You want to help me?”

“Would I have offered if I didn’t want to?”

“Well, I don’t know, I—” He rubbed the back of his neck, staring with wide eyes, then blew out a breath and looked around when she didn’t falter or change her mind.

“Alright then, uh… Here.”

The disc he held was placed down by Pepper’s elbow, and more than a few others were trapped inside the crook of his arm and pushed across the workbench to sit in front of her. Tony gestured to the messy pile as he stepped away.

“You can take some of these apart. I need a break, my hands hurt and I gotta go do some, uh… some coding, do some wiring.”

Pepper looked up at him with a cocked brow and Tony sent a similar expression back. He gave an expectant flick of his gaze down to her hands, causing her to breathe a laugh through her nose.

“It would be my honor, Mister Stark.”

Something in Tony seemed to freeze for a moment there. He stood under the white lights from the ceiling with his head tilted to the side, staring at her like she was a puzzle. Pepper looked right back, a sobering sensation in her chest as she figured that now— _right_ now, in this instance, but also in general—she was nothing less than that in Tony’s eyes. A puzzle to pull apart and piece back together. She’d been through a couple breakups in her life and knew with a special kind of sting that if the opposite side of the split was worth even a single iota of a damn, they suddenly became this great mystery cast in a new glow, a list of questions craving answers that would always fall short of satisfactory.

_Where did I go wrong? Was I not enough? Is there a way to fix it? Do they want it to be fixed?_

She continued feeling the weight of Tony’s eyes as she looked away, down at the metal casing she’d picked up. Even as Tony stepped farther back, turned around and disappeared to another side of the room, the heaviness of that gaze remained, lingering as a thump inside her chest. Not a heartbeat, but something else. Something otherworldly, like a reminder.

 _He still loves you_ , it whispered.

 _Thank God_ , she thought in response, and the instantaneous nature of the reply shocked down into her core. She shook her head to scare it off— _not here, not now, think about it later_ —and hooked her thumbnail under the groove of the first disc’s edge just as Tony had, grateful for the distraction.

It was mind-numbing, she discovered as she got to work. Apply enough pressure to pop the pieces apart, separate them into two piles by her elbows, reach for another and repeat. Some part of her had always enjoyed these types of tasks, the ones requiring little action and even less thought. Her days were so overly busy, always with decisions to be made and ideas to be rejected, and she did _love_ her job. The responsibility, the prestige that came with it, because it made her so much more than what anybody had ever expected of her back at home.

But this was nice too. Simple movements, no chaos. Just her and the quiet, and before she knew it her neat little piles were spreading out closer to the edges of the table.

That, and it was suddenly impossible to ignore how sore her seat was leaving her.

“Hey, Tony?” she called, prying apart another two pieces of metal. The sides of her fingers were a little red by this point, she noticed.

Tony’s head popped out from around a pillar, the edge of a flathead screwdriver itching at his temple.

“What?”

Pepper gestured across the workshop to the beat-up old futon he still kept in a far corner, covered in yet more garbage.

“Could you be a dear and clear the couch off for me? This stool is turning my thighs numb.”

Tony looked over at the futon, then back at her, squinting when she stuck him with an “I’m waiting” smile. He placed the screwdriver down and walked around the pillar, grabbing up an old rag to wipe his hands down.

“You know, you’re more than welcome to move this stuff around yourself,” he griped, even as he tossed the rag aside and hefted a tower of pizza boxes into his arms.

“I’m too busy carrying over all two thousand of your little discs,” she shot back, sliding off the stool and picking an empty container up from under the workbench. She pushed about half of an unfinished pile inside, cursing under her breath when multiple bits of metal clattered to the ground. As she knelt to pick them up, Tony sent a “just let DUM-E worry about it” over his shoulder.

Standing straight again, Pepper balanced the bin atop her hip and moved off to the side to watch while Tony brushed crumbs off the cushions. The last item to be cleared away was a blue-and-yellow Midtown sweatshirt Peter must have left behind, and Pepper felt a fond thump in her chest when Tony shook the fabric out, folding it neat as he could and resting it on a box.

He made a show of clapping his hands off afterwards.

“There, a clean couch just for you. Tada, you’re welcome, all that.”

“My hero,” Pepper mused, settling herself down. She placed the bin by her feet and smiled up at Tony, who hadn’t moved away yet. “Thank you. Now, come sit with me.”

Tony’s spine straightened at the request, eyebrows lowering.

“Pepper—”

“I’m not really giving you a choice in the matter,” she interrupted, patting the free space beside her. “Come on. You can find some time in your packed schedule to sit for a couple minutes.”

Eyes narrowed and arms crossed, Tony stared for all of three seconds before relenting. He stepped over haltingly, twisted on his heel, and sunk down onto the creaky cushions with a groan. Eyes slipping shut, his neck angled to lean against the back of the couch.

Pepper reached to grab another casing from the box, feeling placated for now. She rubbed the smooth surface between her fingers with a thumb, only making a half-hearted attempt at opening it up. There was a little nudge at the back of her brain telling her she’d accomplished what she’d actually set out to do tonight, unconsciously or not.

“Did you know—” she said after a minute, giving Tony a glance, “—that the last person I gave a free choice to was my hairstylist right before my interview with you?”

Tony, head still faced toward the ceiling with his eyes closed, cocked a brow.

“Oh, really?”

“Yep. I was in a rush and told Fran to just do whatever she wanted. Then the interview started and the first thing you said—one of the _only_ things you said, actually—was, ‘I like your hair, Miss Potts. Very elegant.’ And I got the job twenty minutes later. So, really—” she gave a short laugh when Tony snorted, “— _really_ , I can just blame everything I’ve gone through since then on her choice of hairstyle.”

Tony chuckled at that, all breathy and from the throat. Then he quieted, stilled, opened his eyes with a slight smirk gracing his lips.

“And do you still see Fran?” he asked.

“Oh, of course. She’s the only woman I trust with my hair. I just trust her with whatever _I_ pick out, now.”

Tony hummed, scratched at his facial hair with nails that looked bitten short and crusted with black grease on the edges. A pinch appeared in his cheek, a sure sign he was biting down on the inside of his mouth.

“I’m not…” He trailed off, took a breath. “I’m not really one of the worst things that’s ever happened to you, right?”

His voice was much smaller than it had any right to be. Not hurt, exactly, but… pondering. Pepper sighed, her stomach flipping. Now wasn’t the time for any teasing, nor was it a moment to beat around the bush. She turned enough on the cushion so she could face Tony fully, dropping the disc back into its box.

“Why can’t you sleep?” she asked again, and unlike every other time she’d raised that question tonight, this one came without the pressure edging into her ribcage. As if he could sense the difference, Tony rolled his head along the back of the couch to look at her, eyes sparking with something bordering on amused.

“Nope, sorry. No questioning my methods, and no question _for_ a question. All illegal in my workstation.”

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Pepper settled an elbow on the back of the couch and placed her chin in her palm. She fixed Tony with a pointed stare.

“Tony, I am sitting on your pizza grease-stained couch at an ungodly hour in the morning in what is a very expensive, custom-made skirt gifted to me straight from the sewing machine of Italy herself. You already know my answer to your question.”

Tony squinted an eye up at the ceiling, lips twisting to the side in a faux expression of contemplation.

“Mm… Actually, I think it could be left up to interpretation. Something for, uh—for literary critics to really sink their teeth into.”

Pepper considered him for a moment, lips pursing. Then she turned forward and patted her lap.

“Alright, lie down.”

A brief pause.

“What?”

“Lie. Down,” she ordered again. “Head on my lap, you know the drill.”

“You want my oily, unwashed hair on your skirt?”

“To match the pizza grease, yes.”

Tony puffed out a surprised chuckle at that, only hesitating a moment before straightening up and turning to the side. He leant back with another muted groan, eyes closing when the back of his head met her lap.

Like something natural and expected, Pepper’s fingers found his hairline. As if it hadn’t been months since they’d been alone in the same space for any long amount of time. As if nothing had been ended, and nothing said to end things in the first place. It still felt _okay_ to be doing this, and she didn’t know whether that was terrifying or calming, but her fingers carded through Tony’s hair like that didn’t matter.

And she supposed it didn’t, in all honesty. Especially when they lapsed into another silence, one that was soft, comforting and companionable, so unlike their previous positions at the table. Tony moved minutely, muscles seeming to come undone, breathing evenly through his nose.

When he spoke up, it was out of the blue.

“I don’t know why,” he rumbled, voice quiet, yet seeming so loud against the expanse of the workshop. “I don’t know why I can’t just… conk out. I try, and—nothing.”

Pepper hummed, swept her nails around the shell of his ear. Tony blinked his eyes open for a beat, looked out at some distant point, then closed them again.

“I can’t even say it’s the usual bullshit. Nightmares or… all that. Any of that. Because I can’t fall asleep in the first place to confirm it.”

He swallowed, heavy, and the air trembled with it.

“I can’t fall asleep, Pep. I _can’t_.”

She shushed him then, as soothing as she could manage, because he sounded so frustrated about it. Frustrated and ashamed, as if it were his fault. Pepper knew there had been people in his life who’d made him feel like it couldn’t possibly be anything _but_ that, and she wondered briefly if she’d ever fallen on that list. If she was currently on that list.

Maybe that was why she moved her fingers around his ear again. Why she kept the ministrations up at all, and… Maybe it was why she was still here.

Pity. Guilt. An urge to make up for something.

She closed her eyes against the thought, against the threat of that potential truth, because she didn’t want this to be any of those things.

God, none of this was fair.

“Maybe you’re trying too hard, Tony,” she murmured against the weight settling in her throat. Tony shifted beneath her and she looked down at him then, catching his eyes. “Maybe you’re overthinking it so much that your brain is fighting you on it.”

Tony blinked up at her, stared for what felt like hours, even though it couldn’t have been more than a couple seconds. The side of his lip quirked up, a humorless laugh pushing past his teeth, and he raised a hand. His fingers brushed up against the inside of Pepper’s wrist, fleeting and feather-light.

His arm fell back down just as fast, boneless.

“Maybe,” he mumbled, closing his eyes. His throat bobbed as he swallowed again. “I’m sorry, Pepper.”

Pepper didn’t know what he was actually apologizing for. Perhaps it was for all of tonight. For right now, and for the stains on her skirt.

Or maybe for yesterday, or the day before that. For some point in the future, or a nonspecific moment in time. Maybe it was for the sleep he wasn’t getting, the sleep he _couldn’t_ get.

For the fingers in his hair, or the touch he’d put to the inside of her wrist. For pulling away.

Maybe for all of it, maybe none of it.

Pepper didn’t know. She didn’t. But then again, she hardly ever did anymore.

In spite of all that, she answered anyways.

“It’s okay, Tony.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love writing mental health in the light of healing and progress but also, that shit can get messy. and sometimes i enjoy writing the messy stuff a lot more.
> 
> also the couch conversation was inspired by nate & elena's couch convo in uncharted 3, bc i love them and they mirror pep & tony a lot
> 
> much love to everybody <3


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